HoJo was, at one time, more ubiquitous then McDonalds. It was an American pop-culture icon in the 1960s and 70s (for example, the mention in Blazing Saddles, or the Howard Johnson's hotel on the space station in Kubrick's "2001"). Now, it's just a shell of its former self.
Amazing how quickly a universal reference can become irrelevant.
Re:I think it's energy density that's preventing
on
Blu-ray Laser Gadget
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· Score: 1
I only asked about a few watts, not a military grade, anti-tank weapon.:)
FIRST PROBLEM: I think you'd need more than 3w to provide a serious weapon for the battlefield. I mean, HIGH SPEED PLASTIC WELDERS use lasers with over 100W output...I would expect nothing less of a weapon intended to cut through skin as fast as a bullet would. Higher power requirements mean big, bulky batteries.
Sure, you can burn things with a measly 3w laser, but only if the enemy stands still.
Let's just say you need the minimum power (100w) laser welder I linked to get the skin-cutting performance you want (still pretty low, considering industrial cutters get up to the 10KW range). That's a lot of battery to lug around.
SECOND PROBLEM: it's not just the power SOURCE that's a problem, it's the power dissapation that's at issue.
The efficiency of lasers is pretty low to begin with - numbers I've seen are in the %30-40 range, best case, and less than %1, worst case.
So, let's take our 100w laser rifle, and give it a pretty high efficiency (%40): to generate 100w output continuous fire requires an input of 250w!! That means you have to dissapate a massive 150w while continuously firing the device.
This leads to the THIRD PROBLEM: laser efficiency decreases significantly with the increase in laser temperature, making cooling an even more important problem. If you don't control the temperature with active cooling, your laser spirals out of control in a feedback loop. Thus, you MUST have a bulky cooling solution.
Until they make power virtually free and tiny, man-portable laser weapons are a pipe dream. The good news is, there are DARPA-funded research programs to produce more efficienct lasers, and they've already reached levels of %65. Their eventual goal is %80 peak efficiency. Now all you have to do is solve the energy problem:D
It's not quite that good in it's current incarnation. Right now, high-end (4 and 8-way) Opteron chips have only three HyperTransport links.
Try connecting 4 of these chips together using only 3 HyperTransport links per core, with a single-hop memory latency, and allow for one link to external I/O. Can't be done. There are two hops required for the core that handles I/O, which is not a good thing when you consider how important I/O links are in a server.
Try connecting 8 sockets using only 3 HyperTransport links, and allow 2 connections minimum for external I/O - now most of your connections are two hops or more.
1. K8L adds a fourth HyperTransport link, which allows easy single-hop 4-socket systems (and allows all 4 sockets to interface with external I/O, if desired).
2. K8L allows the HyperTransport links on each socket to be split from 4 16-bit links to 8 8-bit links, to allow single-hop memory latency on 8-socket configurations. Combined with the faster bus speeds of HyperTransport 3.0, that's plenty of bandwidth to feed 32 cores. And of course, there's potential for 16-socket configurations (with only 2-hop memory latency, depending on whether AMD decides to support this gluelessly).
Meanwhile, even with the massive caches and Dual Independent Bus architecture, Intel's 4-core chips are going to reach saturation at 4 sockets.
Couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that you have a POS video card, could it?
Nvidia pulled a fast one on you. The 7100 GS series is a rebranding of the old 6200 TC series, and thus has pathetic performance. The old 6200 does not have advanced compression technology (unlike every other chip available today), which means with a pathetic 64-bit bus it runs like a dog.
I've noticed with Source that the lower your framerate, and the less on-card memory, the more likely you are to encounter sound stuttering (due to texture loads and the like). With the extra load TurboCache is putting on your memory subsystem, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that is the source of the problem.
Try running it in DirectX 7 mode and see if that doesn't help things. But my best suggestion would be to get a real video card (IE, no turbo cache, at least a 128-bit bus, and more than two ROPs). You can pick up a card about 4 times as powerful as your 7100 for under $100 - the 7600 GS.
Some other questions:
Your amount of ram makes me think you have a Socket 754 system. Do you have 3x512MB ram sticks? That hurts performance.
Also, if you have a Socket 754 system, do realize that memory bandwidth is precious on such systems, and is being eaten up by your 7100 card. You can't expect your soundcard to stream audio without stuttering if the video card is sapping your limited memory bandwidth.
Well, lookiehere! Over the last week, brick & mortar retailers AND etailers across the country have done a boneheaded thing and sold the cards to customers early.
Funny thing: many customers noticed glitches in 3D mode...what a coincidence! I guess we do need a recall!
At that time last year, the 128MB 6600 PCIe was under $100. Although it was impossible for the 6600 to reach the clocks of the venerable 6600 GT, it was significantly faster than the 6200.
I do agree - the 6200 was a castrated card - no ultrashadow or lossless memory compression - but it was an exception.
All current 7000-series Nvidia cards have the same feature-set, with the exception of hardware SLI connectors. The 7300 GS is the only TurboCache card, and even with that limitation it manages to outperform the 6200 series it replaced.
The price / performance ratio of the 7000-series midrange is unbeatable. The 7600 GS is right under $100, featuring 256MB of memory and performance between a 6600 GT and a 6800 of last-generation. The 7600 GT is less than $140, featuring 256MB ram and perfomance about that of a 6800 Ultra of last-generation.
Oh come on, you expect me to believe that horseshit?
Everyone knows this is the child of Manbearpig!
Re:Oblivion is both shallow and deep...
on
Game Breakers
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· Score: 1
I gave up on the Oblivion leveling game when I had this happen to me:
I restarted my character because by level 20, my character couldn't keep up with the "scaled" enemies. People told me the "tricks," and insisted I should be able to pull-off 4-5 skill-points per category each level-up. I had been averaging three, so I said what the hell.
So I'm looking to level, and I sleep, and the level is 4 Int, 4 Wis and 2 Str. I figure with some work I can bump up the Str to 3, and the Int or Wis to 5, so I reload to before the level-up and set about it. I kill lots of creatures with blade and hand-to-hand. I cast all sorts of spells and create alchemical potions.
In the end, I sleep again and what do I get? THREE Int, THREE Wis and TWO Str. What. The. Fuck. Seems NOBODY knows what's really going on with the Oblivion level system.
Since then I said screw this. I installed Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul, and that gets me two things:
1: I don't have to worry about optimizing my levels. Quests DO scale with your level, but the creatures in the quest have a MAXIMUM CELING. The main quest is also geared for level 25 characters, so there's no rush. You can use the time to explore the huge world, and do sidequests.
2. Every once and awhile I actually meet a random enemy that is TOO POWERFUL (imagine that). In regular Oblivion this is impossible. Sometimes I run away successfully, and sometimes I die, but it makes the game a little more interesting. The only thing I used to run away from was ghosts, but now I have had to learn how to run away effectively (and avoid running into more creatures in the process), and it adds greater depth to the game.
Exactly, there was no other consortum competing with DVD.
There was competition from DIVX. However, once people realized that you could only buy DIVX players and movies at Circuit City, and that you had to pay every time you wanted to watch one, and that you couldn't play your "gold" unlocked discs in any other player except your own, and that DIVX movies didn't come with extra features, etc - people caught on quick.
The problem with HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray is two-fold:
The first issue is that both standards are equally compelling. Each have major studio support, and each can use modern codecs and sizeable capacity to deliver much improved image quality. On the other hand, both standards are plagued by a lack of platforms - while the $500-1000 introduction DVD players looked incredible even on regular TVs of the time, $500-1000 introduction HD disc players only look "better" on HDTVs (%20 or market), and they really only look "incredible" by comparison on 1080p screens (less than %1 of market).
I don't want to have a 2TB disk array spinning away so my alarm clock can play/stream MP3s
You don't need a massive array. I have a collection of almost 200 CDs, and when ripped to lame mp3 they take less than 20GB. That's a selection of thousands of songs at my fingertips, and you can store it almost anywhere.
I personally keep a copy of the music on another hard drive. I also copied them to 4 DVDs a few months ago so I could take my music collection to another computer. Even on my Mac Mini (60GB), 20GB is only %40 of the free (from the factory) disk space, so I have a copy of my music on the Mini and use it as a jukebox. My Mac Mini uses a tiny trickle of power in standby, and uses significantly less than a lightbulb while playing mp3s...it's not hard to find a low-power machine that's good at just these kinds of tasks.
Hard drive crashes make you lose data? Since when? Consider this: even if all my drives containing all my copies of the music crash, even if all my DVDs containing the collection get scratched to hell, I STILL have the original CD: the ultimate backup copy.
The only people who need multi-terrabyte arrays for MUSIC are:
1. People who are addicted to downloading music. These people download music for the sole purpose of having "more." They rarely listen to more than a quarter of their "collection."
2. People who produce music / webcasts, or listeners who feel the inanne need to archive web feeds.
3. Purists who insist on archiving hundreds of CDs to FLAC. File sizes with FLAC are about 4 times larger than Lame standard preset mp3.
MP3s are no different than the 'mix tapes' we made in the 80s.
Certainly not, mp3s are different. They're not limited to some physical size (4" by 2.5" by 11/32" thick), nor some maximum recording time (60 minutes per side). The only standard for mp3 is the file format.
Once you encode an mp3, you have your choice of playback media. You can leave it on a computer harddisk, put it on a portable flash player, put it on a CD and play it in your in-car or portable CD-mp3 player. The point of mp3s is they play ANYWHERE, and the technology is tiny and cheap.
There are side benefits over tape, of course: no tape reel noise, fast random access, and relatively fast, LOSSLESS generational copy. Tape, by comparison, loses fidelity with each copy generation, and per-song copies take MINUTES (even with high-speed dubbing).
Believe me, I made some of my own mix tapes back in the day, and mp3 is so much better! It STILL amazes me what I used to go through just to make one tape, and then make copies for friends.
I remember back in about 1995 I was occasionally buying PC Gamer, and one month they had a feature on Transport Tycoon, a game I'd never heard of. They supplied a demo disk, but I remember tossing it aside because I din't have enough ram to run the game. However, once I upgraded, I plugged in the disk, and was instantly hooked. I've played that game ever since, and it seems I'm not the only one - the game has inspired an entire development community, including the TTDPatch, and OpenTTD.
I did the same thing with Battlefield 1942. I didn't hear of it until the demo was already out. Everyone said I had to play the demo, so I did. Just like that, I was hooked, and I bought the game the week of release. I did the same thing with Battlefield 2, because it was such a big improvement, even over the Desert Combat mod. However, recently I played the demo for Battlefield 2142, and I found that it sucked, so I refused to buy it.
The game that I havn't played demos for (because they were not available): I'd say I enjoyed at least 2/3 of the games, but I find the ratio is only that good because I research them extensively.
Yay for demos! They make it easy to find good games.
Just going to 300mm wafers pretty much doubles capacity.
Yup. The total area more than doubles moving between the two.
Going to 65nm gets you another say 50% (anyone got a confirmed number).
There are no confirmed numbers, because semiconductor makers play their hands close to their chests. All the interesting data is typically proprietary and treated as a trade secret.
But the better estimate would be a straight shrink of the feature size + 5-10% for optimizations. The straight shrink of a 90nm feature size to 65nm, assuming scalable design rules, is a %28 gain. I'd say with custom reworking, you could gain as much as %35 production capacity over a 90nm line.
Getting FAB 36 and FAB 30 going doubles capacity again.
Fab 30 already exists. It is a 200mm 90mn facility. It produces the vast majority of AMD's microprocessors. The rest are trickling out of Fab 36 (which has limited 90nm production, and is ramping up 65nm), or are supplied by Chartered Semiconductor. Chartered looks to be a long-term partner (much like AMD used to be an Intel second-source), since they've licensed AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing methodology.
AMD does have plans to rework Fab 30 as a 300mm, 65nm fab (and rename it Fab 38), but that won't kick off full-swing until Fab 36 reaches full production (middle of next year).
When you Chartered into account, I figure Fab 36 will only double their capacity. But with the transition of Fab 30->Fab 38, and the opening of the fab in New York (planned for 2010, 2011), there is potential for much-increased production. It amazes me that AMD can hold a %17 marketshare against Intel despite only having "one and a half" fabs. But when you look into it, while Intel has FIFTEEN fabs, only four of them are cutting-edge 300mm, 65nm. By concentrating on one core business, AMD can do more with less, but it also makes them more vulnerable as a company.
Expect 65nm chips from Fab 36 in the coming months, but don't expect the full increase in production until middle of 2007. Quadcore will be available from AMD at that time as well.
Is anyone else a bit surprised that a Slashdot editor didn't know that Enlightenment was a window manager, and even worse, used it incorrectly three times? After the first time, one of the other editors should have pointed it out to him, eh?
Not at all. I havn't seen Enlightenment in a popular distro's default configuration since Redhat 6...it's been that long since Enlightenment was 'hot'.
In fact, it was so dead the "1.0 release" was the subject of an April Fools joke back in 2003. Do a search of Slashdot, the pickings are slim.
In 2005 we saw a few stories concerning E17, but they've dried up in the last year. Personally, if I had never used Enlightenment back in the day, I also would have no fucking clue it existed. They're certainly trying their best to fall below the radar.
Ultra 64 was an incredible product, and left SGI with two growth options:
Growth option 1: utilizethe incredibly cheap hardware to get SGI into the mainstream market. It had all the features of a high-end SGI workstation for $200. All you had to add was more ram, a disk and a monitor, and you could build a mass-market machine for under $1500. They could have beaten Sun into the ground, and even give the Pentium Pro a run for its money with beefy graphics workstations at around 3-4k. But no, SGI sat idly by and let Sun, NT, consumer 3D companies and (most importantly) the Pentium Pro take root, letting themselves get slaughtered.
Growth option 2: even if SGI wasn't motivated enough to expand into the mainstream workstation market, they could have leveraged all that time put into Ultra 64. After SGI did such a great job, Nintendo came looking for a design partner for their next-generation console, and got turned away. SGI decided to concentrate on their core business, and left Nintendo standing there.
SGI missed two distinct chances to grow their market, so I have no sympathy.
Yes, wireless is crappy for high-bandwidth needs. The fact is we can't get rid of the wires without sacrificing something. With wireless USB, you could have high performance, but it would come at the cost of power or spectrum, neither of which is easy to come by.
DVI is convenient (even though it is wired) because it has 3 data lines using TMDS. What this buys you is a single 24-bit pixel transferred per clock. With an upper limit of 165 Million pixels per second (3.7 Gbps), or double that for dual-link, you can drive some awesome displays.
The dream of high-bandwidth devices without wires always seems silly to me anyway, because high-bandwidth devices usually can't escape the power cord.
If you play the demo, you come to realize that Battlefield 2142 is just a full-conversion mod to Battlefield 2.
* Engine is almost exactly the same - don't even think they added HDR. * Gameplay feels like BF2 with the addition of a couple mechs on the map, and "hover-style" vehicles stolen from Tribes. * More unlocks than BF2. At least in BF2, you started with a full arsenal. You have to UNLOCK GRENADES! * Significantly less classes, which I think takes away from the game.
Titan mode sounds good, except that the corridors are too damn dark and compact to have been designed by anyone competent. Playing inside the Titan is no fun, especially in a game known for it's extravagant outdoor battlescapes. It's like they purposefully took a step backwards.
Speaking of taking steps backwards, the infantry combat really suffers compared to the the improvements made in BF2. With the mechs and agile hover vehicles, infantry combat now seems even less important. Also, the cap points on the demo map are really spread out, so it you can't get a vehicle at spawn, the game turns into "find a vehicle." In BF2, by contrast, the cap points are typically close enough that you could reach most of them on foot. Perhaps if you gave all the infantry jet packs....no, wait, then you'd have Tribes.
In fact, the more I look at the game, the more I want to call it Tribesfield 2142. All the vehicles and base-killing of Tribes without a single jetpack.
The BIOS settings aren't stored in flash for two reasons:
1. It's a much better failsafe to use battery-backed SRAM to store your BIOS settings because, if you every fuck something up royally, all you have to do is cut power to the SRAM. Flash, on the other hand, requires more complex interface devices and reduncancy - you'd basically have to store a flash writing program and a default image on a ROM, which only higher-end motherboards typically offer even today (and only for updating / restoring the firmware image).
2. Why bother with flash when you already need a battery to power your real-time clock? Or do you want to go back to the dark days of the IBM PC XT, where it prompted you for the date and time every time you turned on the computer?
This isn't an issue of taxable SALES, it's an issue of taxable INCOME.
It is true that, due to the intangibility of code, you cannot tax the SALE of that code. However, if you are making monetary gains, it is considered self-employment, and is subject to federal and (in some states) local income taxes.
Fab 36 is still ramping up - once it hits %100 next year AMD's total capacity should double. After that, AMD will slowly transition their other fab from 200mm to 300mm wafers, which should roughly double the chip output from said fab.
Thus, AMD's capacity has room to grow production 3x from now to 2008. Fab 36 has been a long time coming, but at this point the 65 nm transition should be smooth.
AMD has also been outsourcing to other fabs to meet production needs this year. Obviously, it hasn't been enought to make up for Dell, but it has eased the shortage.
The AMD 761 chipset was impressively stable, and a buddy of mine is still using the old machine I gave him. The one thing you're forgetting is, the AMD 761 northbridge was usually paired with a VIA southbridge. So, even then, you were using a partial VIA chipset, and the stability was still there.
VIA has actually improved with every chipset revision, and almost everything that have availalble for the K8-series is rock-solid. I ended up purchasing an Asus A8V with the KT800 Pro chipset, and it was quite impressive. I was able to run the machine for days without stability problems, plus I had ZERO issues with my Soundblaster Audigy card (a traditional problem with VIA chipsets). From the reviews I have read, their PCIe offerings are also solid.
So, don't turn a blind eye - VIA's chipset quality has improved drastically. While you can point out that competition from Nvidia and ATI forced VIA to offer comparable stability, the fact of the matter is VIA's products are solid today.
Slashdot Mirror
A win on either defense would probably put the RIAA litigation juggernaut out of business.
:D
That, or else you might start getting served papers for $2.80 in damages
I don't even know what a howard johnson's is, is it a restaurant or a hotel?
It's both.
HoJo was, at one time, more ubiquitous then McDonalds. It was an American pop-culture icon in the 1960s and 70s (for example, the mention in Blazing Saddles, or the Howard Johnson's hotel on the space station in Kubrick's "2001"). Now, it's just a shell of its former self.
Amazing how quickly a universal reference can become irrelevant.
I only asked about a few watts, not a military grade, anti-tank weapon. :)
:D
FIRST PROBLEM: I think you'd need more than 3w to provide a serious weapon for the battlefield. I mean, HIGH SPEED PLASTIC WELDERS use lasers with over 100W output...I would expect nothing less of a weapon intended to cut through skin as fast as a bullet would. Higher power requirements mean big, bulky batteries.
Sure, you can burn things with a measly 3w laser, but only if the enemy stands still.
Let's just say you need the minimum power (100w) laser welder I linked to get the skin-cutting performance you want (still pretty low, considering industrial cutters get up to the 10KW range). That's a lot of battery to lug around.
SECOND PROBLEM: it's not just the power SOURCE that's a problem, it's the power dissapation that's at issue.
The efficiency of lasers is pretty low to begin with - numbers I've seen are in the %30-40 range, best case, and less than %1, worst case.
So, let's take our 100w laser rifle, and give it a pretty high efficiency (%40): to generate 100w output continuous fire requires an input of 250w!! That means you have to dissapate a massive 150w while continuously firing the device.
This leads to the THIRD PROBLEM: laser efficiency decreases significantly with the increase in laser temperature, making cooling an even more important problem. If you don't control the temperature with active cooling, your laser spirals out of control in a feedback loop. Thus, you MUST have a bulky cooling solution.
Until they make power virtually free and tiny, man-portable laser weapons are a pipe dream. The good news is, there are DARPA-funded research programs to produce more efficienct lasers, and they've already reached levels of %65. Their eventual goal is %80 peak efficiency. Now all you have to do is solve the energy problem
It's not quite that good in it's current incarnation. Right now, high-end (4 and 8-way) Opteron chips have only three HyperTransport links.
Try connecting 4 of these chips together using only 3 HyperTransport links per core, with a single-hop memory latency, and allow for one link to external I/O. Can't be done. There are two hops required for the core that handles I/O, which is not a good thing when you consider how important I/O links are in a server.
Try connecting 8 sockets using only 3 HyperTransport links, and allow 2 connections minimum for external I/O - now most of your connections are two hops or more.
K8L attempts to solve these problems in two ways:
1. K8L adds a fourth HyperTransport link, which allows easy single-hop 4-socket systems (and allows all 4 sockets to interface with external I/O, if desired).
2. K8L allows the HyperTransport links on each socket to be split from 4 16-bit links to 8 8-bit links, to allow single-hop memory latency on 8-socket configurations. Combined with the faster bus speeds of HyperTransport 3.0, that's plenty of bandwidth to feed 32 cores. And of course, there's potential for 16-socket configurations (with only 2-hop memory latency, depending on whether AMD decides to support this gluelessly).
Meanwhile, even with the massive caches and Dual Independent Bus architecture, Intel's 4-core chips are going to reach saturation at 4 sockets.
Sure, I remember...
Bill Cosby has sex with Ms. Cartman.
Trapper Keeper absorbs Rosie O'Donnel ('bad pie').
Bill Cosby disappears.
You want a Canon A700:
6x optical zoom.
6 MP.
Uses only two AAs, so you can fit it in a pocket.
Around $275 here in the states, can't be more than £275 over there (even taking your usual markup into account).
If you want someting with more frills, the A710 has a 7.1 MP sensor and image stabilization for the 6x zoom.
Couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that you have a POS video card, could it?
Nvidia pulled a fast one on you. The 7100 GS series is a rebranding of the old 6200 TC series, and thus has pathetic performance. The old 6200 does not have advanced compression technology (unlike every other chip available today), which means with a pathetic 64-bit bus it runs like a dog.
I've noticed with Source that the lower your framerate, and the less on-card memory, the more likely you are to encounter sound stuttering (due to texture loads and the like). With the extra load TurboCache is putting on your memory subsystem, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that is the source of the problem.
Try running it in DirectX 7 mode and see if that doesn't help things. But my best suggestion would be to get a real video card (IE, no turbo cache, at least a 128-bit bus, and more than two ROPs). You can pick up a card about 4 times as powerful as your 7100 for under $100 - the 7600 GS.
Some other questions:
Your amount of ram makes me think you have a Socket 754 system. Do you have 3x512MB ram sticks? That hurts performance.
Also, if you have a Socket 754 system, do realize that memory bandwidth is precious on such systems, and is being eaten up by your 7100 card. You can't expect your soundcard to stream audio without stuttering if the video card is sapping your limited memory bandwidth.
Well, lookie here! Over the last week, brick & mortar retailers AND etailers across the country have done a boneheaded thing and sold the cards to customers early.
Funny thing: many customers noticed glitches in 3D mode...what a coincidence! I guess we do need a recall!
At that time last year, the 128MB 6600 PCIe was under $100. Although it was impossible for the 6600 to reach the clocks of the venerable 6600 GT, it was significantly faster than the 6200.
I do agree - the 6200 was a castrated card - no ultrashadow or lossless memory compression - but it was an exception.
All current 7000-series Nvidia cards have the same feature-set, with the exception of hardware SLI connectors. The 7300 GS is the only TurboCache card, and even with that limitation it manages to outperform the 6200 series it replaced.
The price / performance ratio of the 7000-series midrange is unbeatable. The 7600 GS is right under $100, featuring 256MB of memory and performance between a 6600 GT and a 6800 of last-generation. The 7600 GT is less than $140, featuring 256MB ram and perfomance about that of a 6800 Ultra of last-generation.
Oh come on, you expect me to believe that horseshit?
Everyone knows this is the child of Manbearpig!
I gave up on the Oblivion leveling game when I had this happen to me:
I restarted my character because by level 20, my character couldn't keep up with the "scaled" enemies. People told me the "tricks," and insisted I should be able to pull-off 4-5 skill-points per category each level-up. I had been averaging three, so I said what the hell.
So I'm looking to level, and I sleep, and the level is 4 Int, 4 Wis and 2 Str. I figure with some work I can bump up the Str to 3, and the Int or Wis to 5, so I reload to before the level-up and set about it. I kill lots of creatures with blade and hand-to-hand. I cast all sorts of spells and create alchemical potions.
In the end, I sleep again and what do I get? THREE Int, THREE Wis and TWO Str. What. The. Fuck. Seems NOBODY knows what's really going on with the Oblivion level system.
Since then I said screw this. I installed Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul, and that gets me two things:
1: I don't have to worry about optimizing my levels. Quests DO scale with your level, but the creatures in the quest have a MAXIMUM CELING. The main quest is also geared for level 25 characters, so there's no rush. You can use the time to explore the huge world, and do sidequests.
2. Every once and awhile I actually meet a random enemy that is TOO POWERFUL (imagine that). In regular Oblivion this is impossible. Sometimes I run away successfully, and sometimes I die, but it makes the game a little more interesting. The only thing I used to run away from was ghosts, but now I have had to learn how to run away effectively (and avoid running into more creatures in the process), and it adds greater depth to the game.
Exactly, there was no other consortum competing with DVD.
There was competition from DIVX. However, once people realized that you could only buy DIVX players and movies at Circuit City, and that you had to pay every time you wanted to watch one, and that you couldn't play your "gold" unlocked discs in any other player except your own, and that DIVX movies didn't come with extra features, etc - people caught on quick.
The problem with HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray is two-fold:
The first issue is that both standards are equally compelling. Each have major studio support, and each can use modern codecs and sizeable capacity to deliver much improved image quality. On the other hand, both standards are plagued by a lack of platforms - while the $500-1000 introduction DVD players looked incredible even on regular TVs of the time, $500-1000 introduction HD disc players only look "better" on HDTVs (%20 or market), and they really only look "incredible" by comparison on 1080p screens (less than %1 of market).
They're the same. Viiv is a technology platform, like Centrino.
Win9x emulation was added Windows 2000 SP2. The only difference between 2000 and XP is you have to turn it on under 2000.
To activate, follow these instructions.
Now you can right-click on older executables and there will be a compatibility tab.
I don't want to have a 2TB disk array spinning away so my alarm clock can play/stream MP3s
You don't need a massive array. I have a collection of almost 200 CDs, and when ripped to lame mp3 they take less than 20GB. That's a selection of thousands of songs at my fingertips, and you can store it almost anywhere.
I personally keep a copy of the music on another hard drive. I also copied them to 4 DVDs a few months ago so I could take my music collection to another computer. Even on my Mac Mini (60GB), 20GB is only %40 of the free (from the factory) disk space, so I have a copy of my music on the Mini and use it as a jukebox. My Mac Mini uses a tiny trickle of power in standby, and uses significantly less than a lightbulb while playing mp3s...it's not hard to find a low-power machine that's good at just these kinds of tasks.
Hard drive crashes make you lose data? Since when? Consider this: even if all my drives containing all my copies of the music crash, even if all my DVDs containing the collection get scratched to hell, I STILL have the original CD: the ultimate backup copy.
The only people who need multi-terrabyte arrays for MUSIC are:
1. People who are addicted to downloading music. These people download music for the sole purpose of having "more." They rarely listen to more than a quarter of their "collection."
2. People who produce music / webcasts, or listeners who feel the inanne need to archive web feeds.
3. Purists who insist on archiving hundreds of CDs to FLAC. File sizes with FLAC are about 4 times larger than Lame standard preset mp3.
MP3s are no different than the 'mix tapes' we made in the 80s.
Certainly not, mp3s are different. They're not limited to some physical size (4" by 2.5" by 11/32" thick), nor some maximum recording time (60 minutes per side). The only standard for mp3 is the file format.
Once you encode an mp3, you have your choice of playback media. You can leave it on a computer harddisk, put it on a portable flash player, put it on a CD and play it in your in-car or portable CD-mp3 player. The point of mp3s is they play ANYWHERE, and the technology is tiny and cheap.
There are side benefits over tape, of course: no tape reel noise, fast random access, and relatively fast, LOSSLESS generational copy. Tape, by comparison, loses fidelity with each copy generation, and per-song copies take MINUTES (even with high-speed dubbing).
Believe me, I made some of my own mix tapes back in the day, and mp3 is so much better! It STILL amazes me what I used to go through just to make one tape, and then make copies for friends.
I remember back in about 1995 I was occasionally buying PC Gamer, and one month they had a feature on Transport Tycoon, a game I'd never heard of. They supplied a demo disk, but I remember tossing it aside because I din't have enough ram to run the game. However, once I upgraded, I plugged in the disk, and was instantly hooked. I've played that game ever since, and it seems I'm not the only one - the game has inspired an entire development community, including the TTDPatch, and OpenTTD.
I did the same thing with Battlefield 1942. I didn't hear of it until the demo was already out. Everyone said I had to play the demo, so I did. Just like that, I was hooked, and I bought the game the week of release. I did the same thing with Battlefield 2, because it was such a big improvement, even over the Desert Combat mod. However, recently I played the demo for Battlefield 2142, and I found that it sucked, so I refused to buy it.
The game that I havn't played demos for (because they were not available): I'd say I enjoyed at least 2/3 of the games, but I find the ratio is only that good because I research them extensively.
Yay for demos! They make it easy to find good games.
Just going to 300mm wafers pretty much doubles capacity.
Yup. The total area more than doubles moving between the two.
Going to 65nm gets you another say 50% (anyone got a confirmed number).
There are no confirmed numbers, because semiconductor makers play their hands close to their chests. All the interesting data is typically proprietary and treated as a trade secret.
But the better estimate would be a straight shrink of the feature size + 5-10% for optimizations. The straight shrink of a 90nm feature size to 65nm, assuming scalable design rules, is a %28 gain. I'd say with custom reworking, you could gain as much as %35 production capacity over a 90nm line.
Getting FAB 36 and FAB 30 going doubles capacity again.
Fab 30 already exists. It is a 200mm 90mn facility. It produces the vast majority of AMD's microprocessors. The rest are trickling out of Fab 36 (which has limited 90nm production, and is ramping up 65nm), or are supplied by Chartered Semiconductor. Chartered looks to be a long-term partner (much like AMD used to be an Intel second-source), since they've licensed AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing methodology.
AMD does have plans to rework Fab 30 as a 300mm, 65nm fab (and rename it Fab 38), but that won't kick off full-swing until Fab 36 reaches full production (middle of next year).
When you Chartered into account, I figure Fab 36 will only double their capacity. But with the transition of Fab 30->Fab 38, and the opening of the fab in New York (planned for 2010, 2011), there is potential for much-increased production. It amazes me that AMD can hold a %17 marketshare against Intel despite only having "one and a half" fabs. But when you look into it, while Intel has FIFTEEN fabs, only four of them are cutting-edge 300mm, 65nm. By concentrating on one core business, AMD can do more with less, but it also makes them more vulnerable as a company.
Expect 65nm chips from Fab 36 in the coming months, but don't expect the full increase in production until middle of 2007. Quadcore will be available from AMD at that time as well.
Is anyone else a bit surprised that a Slashdot editor didn't know that Enlightenment was a window manager, and even worse, used it incorrectly three times? After the first time, one of the other editors should have pointed it out to him, eh?
Not at all. I havn't seen Enlightenment in a popular distro's default configuration since Redhat 6...it's been that long since Enlightenment was 'hot'.
In fact, it was so dead the "1.0 release" was the subject of an April Fools joke back in 2003. Do a search of Slashdot, the pickings are slim.
In 2005 we saw a few stories concerning E17, but they've dried up in the last year. Personally, if I had never used Enlightenment back in the day, I also would have no fucking clue it existed. They're certainly trying their best to fall below the radar.
Ultra 64 was an incredible product, and left SGI with two growth options:
Growth option 1: utilizethe incredibly cheap hardware to get SGI into the mainstream market. It had all the features of a high-end SGI workstation for $200. All you had to add was more ram, a disk and a monitor, and you could build a mass-market machine for under $1500. They could have beaten Sun into the ground, and even give the Pentium Pro a run for its money with beefy graphics workstations at around 3-4k. But no, SGI sat idly by and let Sun, NT, consumer 3D companies and (most importantly) the Pentium Pro take root, letting themselves get slaughtered.
Growth option 2: even if SGI wasn't motivated enough to expand into the mainstream workstation market, they could have leveraged all that time put into Ultra 64. After SGI did such a great job, Nintendo came looking for a design partner for their next-generation console, and got turned away. SGI decided to concentrate on their core business, and left Nintendo standing there.
SGI missed two distinct chances to grow their market, so I have no sympathy.
Yes, wireless is crappy for high-bandwidth needs. The fact is we can't get rid of the wires without sacrificing something. With wireless USB, you could have high performance, but it would come at the cost of power or spectrum, neither of which is easy to come by.
DVI is convenient (even though it is wired) because it has 3 data lines using TMDS. What this buys you is a single 24-bit pixel transferred per clock. With an upper limit of 165 Million pixels per second (3.7 Gbps), or double that for dual-link, you can drive some awesome displays.
The dream of high-bandwidth devices without wires always seems silly to me anyway, because high-bandwidth devices usually can't escape the power cord.
If you play the demo, you come to realize that Battlefield 2142 is just a full-conversion mod to Battlefield 2.
* Engine is almost exactly the same - don't even think they added HDR.
* Gameplay feels like BF2 with the addition of a couple mechs on the map, and "hover-style" vehicles stolen from Tribes.
* More unlocks than BF2. At least in BF2, you started with a full arsenal. You have to UNLOCK GRENADES!
* Significantly less classes, which I think takes away from the game.
Titan mode sounds good, except that the corridors are too damn dark and compact to have been designed by anyone competent. Playing inside the Titan is no fun, especially in a game known for it's extravagant outdoor battlescapes. It's like they purposefully took a step backwards.
Speaking of taking steps backwards, the infantry combat really suffers compared to the the improvements made in BF2. With the mechs and agile hover vehicles, infantry combat now seems even less important. Also, the cap points on the demo map are really spread out, so it you can't get a vehicle at spawn, the game turns into "find a vehicle." In BF2, by contrast, the cap points are typically close enough that you could reach most of them on foot. Perhaps if you gave all the infantry jet packs....no, wait, then you'd have Tribes.
In fact, the more I look at the game, the more I want to call it Tribesfield 2142. All the vehicles and base-killing of Tribes without a single jetpack.
The BIOS settings aren't stored in flash for two reasons:
1. It's a much better failsafe to use battery-backed SRAM to store your BIOS settings because, if you every fuck something up royally, all you have to do is cut power to the SRAM. Flash, on the other hand, requires more complex interface devices and reduncancy - you'd basically have to store a flash writing program and a default image on a ROM, which only higher-end motherboards typically offer even today (and only for updating / restoring the firmware image).
2. Why bother with flash when you already need a battery to power your real-time clock? Or do you want to go back to the dark days of the IBM PC XT, where it prompted you for the date and time every time you turned on the computer?
You folks are taking the wrong tact on this.
This isn't an issue of taxable SALES, it's an issue of taxable INCOME.
It is true that, due to the intangibility of code, you cannot tax the SALE of that code. However, if you are making monetary gains, it is considered self-employment, and is subject to federal and (in some states) local income taxes.
Fab 36 is still ramping up - once it hits %100 next year AMD's total capacity should double. After that, AMD will slowly transition their other fab from 200mm to 300mm wafers, which should roughly double the chip output from said fab.
Thus, AMD's capacity has room to grow production 3x from now to 2008. Fab 36 has been a long time coming, but at this point the 65 nm transition should be smooth.
AMD has also been outsourcing to other fabs to meet production needs this year. Obviously, it hasn't been enought to make up for Dell, but it has eased the shortage.
The AMD 761 chipset was impressively stable, and a buddy of mine is still using the old machine I gave him. The one thing you're forgetting is, the AMD 761 northbridge was usually paired with a VIA southbridge. So, even then, you were using a partial VIA chipset, and the stability was still there.
VIA has actually improved with every chipset revision, and almost everything that have availalble for the K8-series is rock-solid. I ended up purchasing an Asus A8V with the KT800 Pro chipset, and it was quite impressive. I was able to run the machine for days without stability problems, plus I had ZERO issues with my Soundblaster Audigy card (a traditional problem with VIA chipsets). From the reviews I have read, their PCIe offerings are also solid.
So, don't turn a blind eye - VIA's chipset quality has improved drastically. While you can point out that competition from Nvidia and ATI forced VIA to offer comparable stability, the fact of the matter is VIA's products are solid today.